I don't claim to know the reasons for special mountain stage bikes but I suspect a lot of marketing spin is involved. I mean what gets the press and bike nuts alike talking about your stuff more than trotting out special prototype or one-of equipment? Taking into consideration the UCI weight limit of 6.8kg, it's not difficult to get stock bike down to that weight, after you slap on some really light wheels.

I live in Taiwan, Taichung specifically, where the Giant is headquartered. The president of Giant live one floor above my apartment and once over a dinner (last year) I asked her, yes, it's a her, that if they make custom frame for the ONCE race team and she said no. So I don't care if some people believe me or not, but I will vouch for the guys here who said Giant doesn't built custom bike for race teams.

p.s. I don't know if they will do it for Ullrich, but at least for ONCE, they don't.

Look, when Giant has to build a new bike, aka. the TCR Advanced, they need NEW molds, right?

OK.

Since they are building a new mold, they are going to tweak the geometry to fit Ullrich. The frame will not be his own personal frame, but it will be the mold the Giant uses as the size large as well. Lances size 58cm, is really size lance, and sold as a 58cm.

In addition they can change the layup to make the frame more suited to the riders needs.

Lance is quoted in procycling to have said that he rides a stock 58 frame because he wants the longer top tube although he would prefer a 56 but think the top tube is too short. This would hardly be the fact if his frame was custom made.

I live in Taiwan, Taichung specifically, where the Giant is headquartered. The president of Giant live one floor above my apartment and once over a dinner (last year) I asked her, yes, it's a her, that if they make custom frame for the ONCE race team and she said no. So I don't care if some people believe me or not, but I will vouch for the guys here who said Giant doesn't built custom bike for race teams.

p.s. I don't know if they will do it for Ullrich, but at least for ONCE, they don't.

Giant may not have made them, but there were some Giant branded custom Titanium frames under Jaja and Olano in some Tour stages that someone made. So it isn't that far out to assume they also made some Al ones. Cycle Sport magazine had an article about the Giant frames ONCE were using and claimed that they made seven sizes of frame for the team instead of the consumer available five. If that claim wasn't true, I'm sure Giant have a good legal department that would have at least made sure a retraction was printed.

I agree, Giant will not manufacture a custom geometry carbon frame - The process is prohibitively expensive!

Actually... with modern Solids Modeling programs and CNC equipment, it's not. I can say with certainty that [for someone like Giant] the molds for an all-carbon frame could probably be made by a few people in a few days. This is <B>far</B> from being "prohibitively expensive". They may not be absolutely perfect molds capable of very high production... but they'd be <I>more</I> than adequate to knock out 50 or 100 frames.

Not only that, but <B>if</B> Giant were to build frames with different geometry for Ullrich (or anyone else), they would be stupid to admit it to <B>anyone</B>. After all... they are in the business to make money, and they do that by selling frames to the public. To "admit" that what is being sold is not exactly what the pros are racing (whether it is or not) would be like shooting themselves in the foot.

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